Investing in Sourcing Recruiters
Business and HR leaders who are not familiar with the services of a retained search agency often are not aware of the value of a specific search specialist, the sourcing recruiter.
Most professional recruiting firms are full life cycle recruiters who manage the recruiting process end to end, Â from understanding the hiring need through to identifying and locating the candidates as well as pre-qualifying and hiring.
The sourcing specialist is an expert researcher who only finds specific talent as well as researches information that leads to referrals to the right talent. The researcher often works for a full life cycle agency and hands the specific talent over, but can also be in service to in-house recruiting teams.
Understanding the difference between the life-cycle recruiter and the sourcer is critical. A common mistake is to evaluate the sourcer’s performance in the same way as the generalist – i.e. on hires.  However, the real ROI is on the bottom line in terms of lowering the cost of future hiring and cycle-time to hire.
An article in www.ere.net by Carl Kutsmode spells out the differences between these separate but complementary approaches to search and recruitment.
More important, it lays out six mistakes to avoid if you want to maximize your return on investment in dedicated sourcing recruiters.